Dark Ages Clan Novel Toreador: Book 9 of the Dark Ages Clan Novel Saga

by Janet Trautvetter

  “Yes, milord, it is.” Alexander said, smiling back at her, dark eyes already alight with anticipation.

  Christof leaned close to Jürgen’s ear. Rosamund could just imagine what the Lord Marshal had to say about this proposal. She did not attempt to hear what he said. Jürgen listened, and listened to the whispered opinion of Father Erasmus as well.

  Finally Jürgen raised his hands for silence, and the murmur of speculation and commentary in the hall faded away. “Lord Alexander, if you will join my command staff in my private council chambers after court, we will discuss this matter further and work out the details. However, I see no reason to deny the privilege of crusade to any good Christian soul who desires to serve God by raising a sword against the infidel. Your boon is granted, milady, and I thank you.”

  They were dismissed. Josselin’s hand under hers guided her in making her proper curtsies, and guiding her back to their places in the hall, nor did he release her hand even then, his support being all that kept her from collapsing on the spot.

  —Be careful what mask you choose….

  “My sweet lady, my rose,” Alexander murmured, taking her hands. He had sought her out as soon as the formal court was ended, dismissing Josselin as her escort and comforting support with little more than a cool glance. “This is a worthy quest indeed you have laid before me—I swear to you, I will seek out this barbarian Qarakh and bring you back his head!”

  “A worthy quest, milord,” Rosamund managed, “for your success will put Lord Jürgen in your debt, and his troops will be accustomed to your command. Use this opportunity well, milord, and it may be the road back to Paris will begin with Riga.” She mustered her bravest smile. “A lady needs no bloody trophies, milord. It is enough that a lover strives to please his lady’s desires in all things, for then he shows his love in his submission to her will.”

  “You chose well this evening, and wisely.” Alexander took her hands to his lips, and for a brief second she was afraid he’d take her there on the spot, there was such a hunger in his eyes. “Forgive me, my sweet rose, for ever doubting your loyalty to me. For how could such a rare jewel and beautiful lady desire to settle for a grubby provincial title, when in but a little while, she can be queen over all of France?”

  With a sharp pang to her already broken heart, Rosamund realized that his words were not solely aimed at her. Lord Jürgen was standing but a short distance off, engaged in a conversation with envoys from distant fiefdoms in the west. She reminded herself that had she not spoken as she had, it was entirely possible that she, Josselin and even Jürgen himself would now be naught but ash.

  “Your pardon, milord, milady.” The Nosferatu monk who had first appeared at the Christmas Court before last, the one named Malachite, stood at Alexander’s shoulder. He had been an infrequent visitor to Magdeburg over the intervening months, and Rosamund scolded herself for not noticing him before. He certainly did not trouble to hide his ravaged countenance, and she had to fight down an instinct to recoil. Alexander seemed unaffected by it. No doubt he has seen worse, Rosamund reminded herself.

  Alexander’s annoyance, however, faded quickly when Malachite spoke again, in a language Rosamund did not know, nor even recognize. Alexander answered him in the same tongue, and then turned to Rosamund again, and kissed her fingertips. “If you will excuse me, my love,” he said, and she could hear the eagerness in his voice—whatever the Nosferatu had said, it had certainly piqued his interest. “I must begin my quest—as it seems our friend here has information of great use to me.”

  “Of course, milord,” Rosamund agreed, hoping she didn’t seem too eager herself.

  Alexander turned away. The Nosferatu’s eyes met hers, soft and brown, almost gentle despite the desiccated bony, sockets in which they sat. “Thank you, milady,” he said in accented French. “You have done well.” Rosamund got the distinct impression he meant a great deal more by those words than the courtesy of permitting his interruption of her conversation.

  Malachite then walked away with Alexander, and left her to her own brooding thoughts.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Magdeburg, Saxony

  Soon after the Feast of St. Martin, November, 1230

  Alexander spread the map out on the table, and Brother Rudiger, Marques and Malachite bent closer to look at it. Christof was not present; Alexander had taken Christof’s position as commander of the crusade, and Rosamund sometimes wondered if the Order’s Lord Marshal would ever forgive her.

  “According to the reports from the Brothers of the Sword, the pagans of Kurland have only in the past year accepted baptism in the Christian faith.” Alexander traced a region on the map, around the bay and the little castle drawing that represented the city of Riga on the coast. “From those reports, it appears that the territory Qarakh’s tribe now claims extends from the Kurland south and east, here, into Samogitia and Semigallia. Their tribe is nomadic, and wanders throughout this region—finding them will be our first priority.”

  “It’s a pity we cannot know exactly where Johann was ambushed,” Brother Rudiger said, looking at the little mark on the map. “Brother Renaud, God rest his soul, was certain he could find the place again. A forest near a—”

  “In this vast, unmarked wilderness, Brother Rudiger, one forest likely looks like another,” Alexander interrupted, coldly. “I highly doubt he stopped to take proper bearings, considering how fast he must have been running. Now, as I was saying, the tribes in the Kurland have accepted baptism, but that does not mean they can be trusted. If it is Qarakh’s intent to drive Christians out of his lands, then he must take that defeat very badly indeed.”

  Alexander looked up, caught Rosamund’s eye for just a brief moment where she stood at the door. She smiled at him warmly. Thus encouraged, he went back to his war council with renewed enthusiasm.

  Rosamund closed the door quietly and left him to his work. Then gathering her courage together as best she could, and stilling the nervous qualms in her unbeating heart, she ascended the stairs at the end of the hall. She stood outside Lord Jürgen’s door for a few minutes, working up the nerve to knock.

  The door opened. Jürgen looked down at her and raised one eyebrow. “Alexander is in the council chamber, milady,” he said curtly. “I suggest you seek him there.”

  “Thank you, your Highness,” she replied, keeping her voice as mild as she could, “but I was actually hoping to have a word with you—if you would indulge me, milord.”

  He nodded, and stepped back, holding the door open for her. “A few minutes, then,” he said. “You might be missed.”

  “Thank you, milord,” she murmured, and slipped past him into the room. He closed the door. “Milord, I—”

  “There’s no need to explain, milady, or apologize,” he said, cutting her off simply by raising his hand. “Clearly you had to make the choice you felt was best for you. And clearly I should have known better than to make such a controversial offer publicly in court.”

  “Yes,” she replied, dryly. “You should have.”

  “Your advice, milady, is ill-timed, given what we had—” He stopped, started again. “Given what you had said before. “

  “And what should I have done, milord?”

  “You should have trusted me,” he insisted. “I promised I’d protect you.”

  “I told you, milord,” she said softly. “This is not about trust.” This was turning out to be every bit as bad as she thought it would be. She could feel his frustration and hurt echoing in her veins, from the blood they had shared. She could only hope that he felt something of her as well.

  “I thought it was what you wanted,” he said. “To be free of Alexander, and to be with me. I knew he’d be angry, but that’s why I did it in court. It’s not in his interest to oppose me as long as he needs my support.”

  “It was not in his interest to kill his childe Olivier, who had stood loyally by him even in his exile, but he did. It was not in his interest to murder Lorraine, his consort—” S
he stopped herself. That story was too painful now, too personal.

  “But he did,” Jürgen finished for her. “I’ve heard the story, milady. Did she not betray him?”

  “That—has been disputed, milord,” she answered. “But whether she actually did or not hardly mattered, so long as he believed she did—by accepting the love and protection of another.”

  A long awkward silence fell between them, as he absorbed the obvious implications of what she had said, and she waited, anxiously, for him to speak.

  “So you would rather martyr yourself than fight back, or even try to free yourself from him.”

  “What do you think I’ve been doing these past six years?” Her voice came out a good deal sharper—and louder—than she had originally intended, but his dismissal of her long struggle struck a spark against her pride. “I am not yet a martyr, milord, and I am still free, at least to think for myself, and love as my own heart bids me. And I will not give that up without a fight, neither to him nor to you!”

  “I never asked you to!” Jürgen snapped back.

  “Didn’t you? In front of all the court?”

  “No!” He looked honestly baffled. “I asked you to be my queen.”

  “Your prize? Taken away from Alexander like a seizing a castle after a siege? What kind of queen should I be then, who is your captive and dependent on you for her survival?”

  “Never my captive, Rosamund. You must believe that.” He sat down heavily in the chair beside his worktable. “If anything, milady, I am yours.”

  It was the first softening he’d shown, the first attempt at courtly language, and Rosamund had to concentrate not to give in too soon. “Indeed?” she asked, although not as coolly as she could have. “If there was one quality I was quite positive your Highness possessed, it was that you and you alone were always your own master.”

  “I suppose I have learned over the years always to convey that impression,” he admitted, grudgingly, “whether it was true at the moment or not. It’s a requirement of the position.”

  Isouda had once said something very much the same. Rosamund sat down on a bench beside the table as well. “And the truth, milord?” she asked.

  “The truth? None of us is ever entirely his own master.”

  “I am sure that your lord sire would have been pleased to see you make an advantageous marriage,” she said, not looking at him. “Or at least you seemed to believe it would have been advantageous. An alliance of state.”

  “I see,” he said slowly. “And now you think that was my only purpose.”

  She didn’t dare look at him now. “Was it?”

  “Is that really how it seemed to you?” he asked, a bit more earnestly. “It seems I have offended you most gravely in those moments where my intention was completely the opposite! I thought you understood the—the esteem in which I have held you from the moment we met!”

  “How would I have understood that, milord?” She did not need to see him to sense his distress, the emotions thrumming in her veins, although his words did not convey his feelings nearly as much as the undercurrents in his voice, and the very tension in his frame that she could see out of the corner of her eye.

  The tension was too much for him to continue sitting. “How would you have me give you to understand it, milady?” he demanded, rising from the chair and striding away to the open window. “No, never mind. I’ve already made my missteps, I cannot take them back. I wish you had said some of these things beforehand….”

  Rosamund rose and followed him, joined him at the window. “I could say much the same, milord. But I see I must have hurt you even more greatly than I feared. It is not like you to give up on any enterprise so soon. Considering you have all eternity before you, would you really abandon this one before it is hardly even begun?”

  He stared out into the night, the dark shadowed streets below, the faint moonlight highlighting the distant hulk of the unfinished cathedral. “Eternity is not a very hopeful word to me at this precise moment, milady,” he said. “I see only a hard road ahead in these next years. Hard and treacherous, and lonely.”

  “Perhaps not lonely,” she murmured.

  He turned toward her, studying her intently. “Perhaps? Is that the most you can give me?”

  “For now, I dare not promise more, milord. I do wish it were not so—but like you, I see a hard road ahead.”

  “But perhaps not lonely.” He smiled ruefully. “I must admire your candor once again, milady. At least you have never been one of those ladies to make promises you cannot keep. I admit a certain part of me would rather hear those promises all the same, but…I suppose only time will tell. We will have to find out the hard way, step by step.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Still, you are right… I have never turned aside from a road because it is hard, or declined a venture because its outcome is not certain. With your permission, then, I will walk this road to wherever it may lead. I will not falter again…and be assured, I will not give up.”

  She smiled back up at him, and was pleased to see him have to take a quick breath in reaction to her gaze. “I look forward to it, milord.”

  To the most noble Lady Isouda de Blaise, Queen of Love for Chartres, Blois and Anjou:

  My dearest and most reverend Lady,

  I hope this letter finds you well, and all in my so distant country of good heart, and blessed of God. For myself, I do not know if I am blessed or not, but must trust as ever in the grace of Our Lord and His most blessed Mother, and in my beloved Saint Margaret who has so far paid good heed to my most desperate prayers and kept me from being swallowed up. Yet God has granted me, if not deliverance, at least some reprieve, although I do not yet know to what end. Lord Alexander—for I will no longer call him by the title that is no longer his—has agreed to lead a crusade against the pagan Cainites in Livonia, at the request of Lord Jürgen. And so I am encouraged now that Alexander is gone, at least for a season. What we most feared has occurred, at least on his part, and although it frightens me, as you can well imagine, thus far I have been able to persuade him to reason. So I have perhaps only delayed the fate he intends for me, yet that delay is a season of hope, and I will cling to it with all my heart.

  Rosamund set her quill aside and chewed on her lower lip. I should tell her, she tried to convince herself. She would understand. She would tell me it was political necessity—not a sin. She would forgive me.

  But still, the guilt had plagued her, kept her from her daytime rest, shortened her patience and her temper. She kept imagining Alexander showing up at her doorstep, injured or suffering some terrible curse, demanding vengeance, accusing her of a worse betrayal even than infidelity. To ease her conscience, Rosamund had finally written a confession, laying out the details of her fault, her most grievous sin of omission, her silent treachery against her liege lord and would-be lover.

  —And the Telyavic sorcerers that are Qarakh’s allies, milady? Does his Highness know about them?

  “No,” she whispered fiercely, in answer to the remembered voice of the Tremere ambassador. She used a long iron poker to feed the parchment sheets of her confession to the fire on the hearth.

  “No, he does not, nor does Alexander—and may God have mercy on my soul.”